This week I started the sunflower harvest in earnest. I’ve grown sunflowers before but harvesting them is new to me. Sites I visited said that they are harvested earlier than I would expect, some say as soon as the heads turn down or turn brown on top.
That seems a little premature, as the leaves are still green, so presumably still pumping nutrients into the seeds, but maybe it has to do with minimising bird damage or loss due to bad weather.
The sunflower stand in the Mid-levels was looking finished, though, and the stems were starting to fall and get in the way, so I seized the opportunity of a sunny and dry day to cut them.
As you can see they were not looking quite like they had a Christmas (main image). I left the few that are still flowering.
The haul was quite heavy, must have been nearing 40 kg, so I wonder what the seed yield is once they have dried out. I tied them in bunches and hung them under the house, aiming to thresh the seeds somehow. I didn’t hold great hope for them drying as it is very humid, but a trial few flowers that I hung to dry in a feed bag (bad idea, the stems and flower heads just about rotted) still released quite reasonable seeds, so hanging seemed viable.
They were destined for chicken feed anyway, so after rodents or birds started to help themselves on the first night, I just took them up to the pen and let the chooks go for it. They weren’t sure at first but got the idea pretty quickly. Now I think that except for seeds I want to save, I will just cut a few heads when I’m free and let the chickens do the work of extracting the seeds.
This has been an interesting crop. I started them just to see how things will grow in the various paddocks that have been overgrown and ungrazed for many years. These beds survived the Spring because I happened to get water pumping to what would become the Mid-levels, while their sister beds died from drought.
As it was a trial, I broadcast thickly, expecting most to be eaten early, but in fact they survived well.
In future I will sow much more thinly, as it’s obvious now that the return for big plants is big seed heads. I’ve seen this elsewhere in the Mid-levels with random seeds that came up after irrigation. Some of them are massive.
This monster is nearly 30 cm across the seed head, and starting to mature now. It would be much easier to pick a few dozen of these than a hundred or so smaller heads for the same yield.
To repeat my earlier post – sunflowers are tough! These have survived drought, heat, prolonged very wet weather, and have barely been bothered by herbivores, including our numerous wallabies. They are only now being eaten by grasshoppers as they are finishing (and maybe being a decoy from other veg).
I’ll be growing these again, and putting in numerous sowings to get serial harvests through Summer.